You're right, can't auto-delete on self-reference. Have to use a trigger for that, and make sure that it deals correctly with nesting.

On the point of joining, yes, you have...

Naming standards do add value to the business, in that they make future development/debugging faster and easier.

Name a business-critical table "Table", give its columns names that start with "Col1", "Col2",...

Simon_L (9/12/2008)

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at the end of the day its just yet another contender (albeit not a very strong one) to cause the end of the world ..

there should be a top...

Good. 🙂

You're welcome.

I didn't keep the specific script I used to populate the test data.

Generally, I use a Numbers table (same as a Tally table, just a different name) if I want...

Cursors can and should be avoided most of the time. Very few actual uses. Substituting a While loop for a cursor isn't really a solution, it just changes...

You might be able to get that data out of the transaction log. You'll need a log parser for that. Lumigent and ApexSQL both have log parsing products.

As...

You're misusing the word "covering" here. I think you mean "including".

A column that's "included" in an index is kept at the bottom level of the index, but not in...

You can't directly convert a database from 2005 to 2000.

What you can do is create a parallel database, with the same tables, code, etc., and migrate the same data into...

Self-referencing tables can work just fine.

You might need to add a cascading delete to the FK, or a trigger if the rules are more complex than that for your data.

Splitting...

You can only have one "end as" command on a case statement. Split it into three case statements and you should be fine.

I've read that it causes issues. BOL has data on how to move system databases.

I haven't tried moving master or resources, I've just read about it.

Is the data type actually "timestamp", or is it "datetime"?

You could do that with dynamic SQL. Unpivot the table to turn the columns into rows, then select those with the value you want, then turn that into a...